A Nearer Moon (11 page)

Benny chuckled. “Poppa says it was probably the creature under the slick that stopped the dam from caving in. He thinks if the swamp turned back into a river, it would wash that mean old thing away. No more swamp, no creature to cast a curse. No more sickness.”

“No more sickness,” Luna echoed.

Luna left Benny's and walked over to the railing in front of her own hut. She rested her chin on her hands and stared down at the water below and at her boat drifting in lonely circles. Footsteps shuffled across the wooden planks, and her grandmother's hands settled on the railing beside her own.

“I'm sorry I scared you, Granny Tu.” It seemed like all Luna ever did anymore was apologize.

“Just because your sister is sick, that doesn't give you the right to risk your own life.”

The breath left Luna's chest like the last hot winds of the dry season. “I only want Willow to get better.”

“We all do, sweetling. But the damage inside her is done. There is nothing you or I or anyone else can do except be here with her now while she suffers.”

Luna curled her toes against the decking. “I just can't believe that. I can't accept it.”

Granny Tu sighed, peering over the edge to the swamp below. “Did I ever tell you why I tacked that charm to the bow of your boat?” she asked, memory thick as syrup in her mouth.

Luna turned her head to the side, resting her cheek on the backs of her hands. “No, you haven't.”

“I wasn't so different from you when I was a girl. I, too, had a boat of my own, though back then, our swamp was a river, and our boats were much shorter, much easier to steer. We had paddles instead of poles, and it was my job to gather fish in the mornings for our family. My little brother—your great-uncle Tin—was always following me wherever I went, always tagging along after me. Often as I could, I'd leave him behind. I was the adventurer, you see. I didn't need a little boy slowing me down.”

“But you love Uncle Tin!”

Granny Tu's eyebrows raised, joining the row of wrinkles that stretched across her forehead. “Do you want to hear this story or not?”

Luna nodded, biting her lips.

“It was Perigee, and Mama was busy, so I had to watch Tin all day. I was not happy about it. For a few hours I did as I was told. I let him tag along behind me while I played with my friends. At dusk, we decided to have a tree climbing contest—something Tin couldn't do. So I left him on the ground, and we climbed higher and higher. We wanted to see the firecrackers against the full moon, glowing against the clouds with no branches in the way. It sounded like a grand idea. But I looked down, just as the celebration was about to start, and he wasn't there.

“I could see a long ways from where I sat, but no matter which way I looked, I couldn't see Tin. I started to panic, not because I was worried about getting into trouble, but because, for the first time, I could see what life would be like without his tottering little legs and his cheerful, chubby face. I slid down that tree fast as I could and started running.

“I checked our hut, I checked the banquet tables, and I checked the firecrackers station, where they were just
beginning to light the matches. But I couldn't find him anywhere.

“I could barely see where I was going—it was getting dark fast even though that Perigee moon was huge on the horizon. I ran down to the river. I swear I thought my heart was going to jump right out of my chest. When I got to the water, the firecrackers started, and they lit the ripples in the river orange and gold and red—it was beautiful.”

Granny Tu hesitated, and she dragged a finger over her lips.

“You'll think I'm cracked when I say this, but truly, the air was thick all around me—it felt alive. I heard what sounded like bells chiming through the trees, and just then a flash of light caught my eye. I turned toward it, and there was Tin, curled up asleep beside my boat. He'd dragged it all the way down to the river by himself—only a pile of rocks had stopped him from reaching the water.”

Granny Tu's lower lip began to tremble.

“All he wanted was to be like his big sister. All he wanted was to be included by me. Going out on the rough night water in a boat he was too little to steer for himself—he would have gone under for sure.”

She took a ragged breath, and her eyes focused on Luna's face.

“What happened after that, Granny Tu?”

“Well, I was a blubbering mess, that's what. I picked up little Tin in my arms and held him tight as I could. Those bells went off again, and above us the firecrackers pounded away at the sky. I went back to where I'd seen the flash of light that had pointed me toward Tin and I found that charm.

“It was dangling from a chain slender as a thread of spider silk. I don't know why, but I plucked it out of the reeds. By morning, the river was creeping toward our doorsteps with nowhere else to go. The meadow was underwater, the land turning quickly into the swamp you see now. For a while the water was still clear and clean, with the brightest skim of green things growing on top, green things that never could have taken hold in the rush and flow of the river. Green things that hid the growing darkness beneath.

“As the years turned over, as the swamp grew, it darkened. We forgot how to swim. Nobody wanted a dunking in the swamp. The water had turned sour. Some families left, looking for a new place to begin again upriver, but they always returned. It was like something—someone has been holding us all here.”

Granny Tu turned her back to the railing, looking through the window to where Willow lay. “Call it a sickness. Call it a curse. Say that a wicked spirit had
taken over the water. Say what you will. Nothing was the same after that day.”

She passed a weary hand over her eyes, letting them fall closed, letting her mind drift along memory's path.

“When every attempt to break through the dam failed, and we settled into life in stilted houses over still water, we learned to make flat boats fit for the swamp. I tacked that charm to the bow of my new boat to remind me every day how fragile life is, and how precious.”

Luna squinted at the charm that had always been there, winking at her from the front of her boat.

“I know you only wanted to help your sister,” Granny Tu said softly. “And that is a good thing, but I don't want you to ever think of doing something so dangerous again. Even if we can't save our Willow, life is too precious for you to be risking yours.”

Thump
thump.

Thump
thump.

Silence.

Sorrow.

Darkness.

Perdy slumped against an upended turtle shell, the waterworn membrane soft as a slug's belly against her skin. Her underwater cave was dark enough to shield her eyes from the sun and empty enough to hide her from the frolicking of playful water snakes and idle waterbirds.
Moisture dripped from the damp rock above to the damp rock below.

She was alone. She was painfully, terribly alone.

Thump
thump.

Thump
thump.

L
una stared, unblinking at the ceiling. Perigee, the nearest moon of the whole year, would fall on the following day. Two days before Willow's three weeks were gone. Two days before the sickness would pull her sister under. Luna's eyes were heavy from sleepless hours and her pulse seemed loud as drumbeats.

Call it a sickness. Call it a curse.

Maybe it was all the same thing, only different words used by different people struggling to understand the sort of thing no one can comprehend. To Granny Tu, with her sprite stories and moon charts, it was a curse. To Mama,
with her prayers and penance, it was a punishment. To Uncle Tin?

No one thing in the world is pure evil or pure good.

He had been talking about the swamp, but maybe it was more than that. If the swamp had been green in the beginning and full of living things, then it hadn't always been a thing to be feared. What had changed? What had turned everything sour?

A reckless, risky thought shivered through her: Maybe the water only needed tending, like the garden. Uncle Tin said there was magic in the back of his herbal. What if it was a healing kind of magic?

Is it so terrible to believe in something?

Luna didn't care what word anyone used—she'd believe in anything by any name if it would make Willow better. She leaped out of bed and tiptoed out of the hut, closing the door gently behind her. Moving quiet as a whisper along the raised walkways, she crept up the hill to the garden. The night was alive, the jungle animals hooting and calling out from the treetops. The moon, a sliver shy of shining full and round, was just rising over the hill like it had been waiting for her, watching her every move.

Luna slid through the door of the garden shed. She
tripped on a shovel handle, and a row of spades and trowels clanged against one another, clattering to the floor. Luna stood still as a statue, listening for an alarm to be raised in the village and watching out the window for torches to flare to life.

But the only sound was that of the restless jungle beyond the garden, and the only light was the moon's. Luna picked up the herbal and leaned against the window, propping the heavy book at an angle to catch the moonlight. She flipped through sketches of trellised vines and instructions on seed starts and lists of herbs and their medicinal qualities. She went all the way to the back, where the writing was oldest and tilted in a looping scrawl.

Each page had a title, a sketch or two, a list of ingredients like a recipe, and a few words to speak while spreading the herbs or tonics or smoke. Luna squinted at the words on the first page.

A tonic to sprinkle around the edges of a tended garden plot to discourage the virility of strangling vines and seeding worts.

No. The brittle paper crackled as she gently turned to the next page.

An incantation with which to strengthen the very roots, trunks, and branches of an ailing tree.

No.

A dram of flower essences for use in the purification of soured water.

A ripple of goose bumps washed over Luna's skin.

She laid the herbal on Uncle Tin's worktable in a slant of moonlight beneath the window and ran her finger under the words. There was only one ingredient listed: juice from the crushed petals of a bat lily.

Luna stepped out of the shed before the clanging alarm bells in her mind could stop her. The only bat lilies she knew of were in the thick of the jungle, where she never went by herself. Where no one ever went at night.

Go back to bed. Look for the bat lily tomorrow, during the daytime.

No. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it now, before the sickness had one more day to try to take Willow away from her. She latched the garden gate behind her and took the fork in the path that led straight into the jungle. Five steps in, the canopy shuttered the moon.

The faint light that marked the path before her quivered as the trees swayed in the night wind. Luna crept through the jungle, her eyes spread wide as an owl's to catch the barest glimmers of light. Shadows that might have been tree creatures or might have been only knots in the bark loomed at her. A rustling sounded behind her that might have been a snake in the grass, or a fanged creature dropping down onto the path. Luna's heart slammed against her ribs, and she broke into a run.

Branches raked across her cheeks and thorned plants drew blood from her skin as she tore through the underbrush. Luna reached a clearing where the moon shone through a gap in the trees, and she skidded to a stop. Her hands shook and her teeth clattered together, though the night was wet with heat.

The bat lilies clustered around the edges of the clearing, their long whiskers dangling into the ferns below and glinting in the pale light. Luna made an apron of her thin cotton shirt and reached for the petals that lifted from their stems as if poised for flight. She tore them off one by one until all the stems were bare.